AANE - Orienting Incoming College Students with Asperger Syndrome

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Orienting Incoming College Students with Asperger Syndrome

by Korinne Hertz, Disability Support Specialist, Middlesex Community College

For the past several years Middlesex Community College (MCC), like many other colleges throughout the United States, has seen a steady increase in the number of entering students with Asperger Syndrome (AS) and other diagnoses on the autism spectrum. Countless students with AS have the intellectual capacity to be successful with college-level academics. However, their difficulty with change, poor ability to read/learn unwritten rules and procedures, and frequent concomitant anxiety—all hallmarks of their AS—exacerbate the already daunting task of transitioning from high school to higher education—even at a nonresidential, commuter college. In my position as a Disability Support Specialist at MCC, I have worked with many students with AS, and had noted that many seemed to struggle most during their first semester. I was looking for ways to address this problem, when a new opportunity came along.

In 1998, Middlesex Community College launched a Carnegie Academy for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning group. Pat Hutchings, Vice President of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, says that the goal of the Carnegie Teaching Academy is to “put forward new models of teaching that will foster deep and lasting understandings by students,” and “to raise the status of teaching by underlining its character as intellectual, scholarly work.” Since 1998, the MCC group has expanded its members and the focus of the work on campus. Faculty representing both campuses (Bedford and Lowell, MA) and a wide range of disciplines have proposed, researched, and shared results of projects to further the scholarship of teaching and learning. In the spring of 2006, the MCC Carnegie group extended their annual invitation for the first time to include not only faculty but also professional staff at MCC. Accordingly, I proposed researching and designing an orientation program for new, incoming students with AS. My proposal was approved, and I was invited to join the group.

During the 2006-2007 school year, I interviewed three groups of people in order to explore their perceptions of initial challenges in transitioning to higher education: students with AS currently enrolled at MCC and finding academic success, disability support specialists at community colleges across the state, and several experts in the disability and higher education field. Based on these results, I designed and implemented a four-session orientation program for students on the spectrum. In August 2007, five students were invited to take part in the pilot orientation program, and four chose to participate. Some of the activities and the topics in our orientation sessions included:

Explicit teaching of the vocabulary of college, e.g., what does “three credits” vs. “four credits” mean? What are the differences between lecture, hybrid, and online courses? What does it mean to add/drop a course vs. withdrawing from a course?
Initial explanation of some common unwritten rules of the MCC campus, e.g.: how to access adjunct faculty vs. how to access full time faculty; where do students go when they have down-time between classes; room numbers that start with a “2” are generally on the second floor, etc.
A campus tour including looking inside a classroom in each academic building.
Several guest speakers, e.g., someone from the student activities office discussing how to get involved.

Initial results appear promising. Answers on the pre and post-orientation surveys reflected students’ increased understanding of some of the systems of the college, as well as increased awareness of where to go and how to ask for help as needed. All four participants independently sought me out during their first days of class, and were able to reiterate information covered during the orientation program. Although they may still have felt anxiety about the transition, they appeared to have the information they needed to begin to navigate a postsecondary environment.

As the Carnegie Group is equally committed to the dissemination of supported scholarly work, my charge for the 2007-2008 academic year has been to compile, document, and report the results of my research and the pilot orientation program. In this way, other colleges will have an opportunity to create orientation programs to increase the comfort and success rates of incoming students with AS.

In September 2007, Korinne Hertz participated in AANE’s panel discussion for prospective college students on the spectrum, their parents, and service providers. For more information on Middlesex Community College’s Carnegie Group, please visit their website at: www.middlesex.mass.edu/carnegie. To contact Korinne Hertz directly, call 781-280-3640 or email .